An absolutely astounding, nauseating info-mercial for coal on MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough show – complete with “God put these resources here for us to use”, a soaring eagle, cute kids, and “we like to give back to the community.” I’ll understand if you have to pause and throw up.

Roughly 1.2 million acres, including at least 500 mountains, have been flattened by mountaintop removal coal mining in the central Appalachian region, and only a fraction of that land has been reclaimed for so-called beneficial economic uses, according to new research by NRDC and our partner group Appalachian Voices.

Oil price volatility "is exactly one of the main reasons why we must move to renewable energy which has a completely predictable cost of zero for fuel" once wind turbines or solar panels were built, she told a news conference.

The concept gaining traction from Wall Street to the City of London is simple. Limits on emissions of carbon dioxide will be necessary to hold temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius, the maximum climate scientists say is advisable. Without technologies to capture the waste gases from combusting fossil fuels, a majority of known oil, gas and coal deposits would have to stay underground. Once that point is reached, they become stranded.

State regulators on Tuesday approved proposals to gut Florida's energy-efficiency goals by more than 90 percent and to terminate solar rebate programs by the end of 2015, giving the investor-owned utilities virtually everything they wanted.

Rachel Maddow reports on how the state of Florida, despite its sunny disposition (and marketing), is cutting back solar energy incentives and goals, letting power companies off the hook over the objections of clean energy advocates.

For the solar and wind industries in the United States, it has been a long-held dream: to produce energy at a cost equal to conventional sources like coal and natural gas. That day appears to be dawning.

In an interview with Mother Jones back in 2009, Inhofe said “Hollywood liberals and extreme environmentalists” engineered the hoax that he calls climate change. When pressed on who in Hollywood specifically did it, Inhofe said: “Barbra Streisand.”

Specifically, his maps show what coastal cities would (will) look like if (when) all the ice caps melt, and the seas rise roughly 80 meters, or 260 feet. (That estimate comes from the U.S. Geological Survey.)

Ot's not just our children and grandchildren who need to worry about global warming. A new study indicates that it takes a mere 10 years for carbon dioxide emissions to produce their maximum warming effects on the Earth.

2014 is on track to be hottest year on record, according to new reports. This is remarkable since such records are typically set in years where the long-term manmade warming trend and the El Niño warming pattern combine. But this year, it's pretty much all global warming.

A nature reserve has been flooded with oil and more than 80 people have been hospitalized after exposure to toxic fumes after approximately 600,000 gallons of crude oil spilled from a pipeline in southern Israel on Wednesday...The massive spill, which resulted from a breach in the 153-mile Trans-Israel pipeline, has been described as “one of the gravest pollution events in the country’s history.”

This is a sampler of the increasingly confused and borderline panicky reactions around the world to the plunging price of oil. Intensely interesting puzzle emerging, as temporary price drops tease consumers, but more thoughtful observers see grave danger for producers, and the economies that are too reliant on them.

Hack studies from NAM and other “business groups” are treated as credible. Well-documented facts are put in enviros’ mouths — “greens say” — to shield reporters from inevitable conservative pushback. The focus is always on costs, not benefits. Politically, the fight is always Dems and EPA on the defense, Republicans on the attack. It’s one special interest (“environmentalists”) vs. another (“business”), not the public interest vs. private interests, or externalized vs. internalized costs.

5) Cutting emissions will cost us - but so will global warming... Economic modeling suggests that this would shave 0.06 percentage points off global economic growth each year....The world would still get richer over time, but at a somewhat slower rate.

But exactly how bad is still an open question, and a lot depends not only on how we react, but how quickly. The rate at which humans cut down on greenhouse gas emissions--if we do choose to cut them--will have a large bearing on how the world turns out by 2100, the forecasts reveal.

Restraining global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius will require changing how the world produces and uses energy to power its cities and factories, heats and cools buildings, as well as moves people and goods in airplanes, trains, cars, ships and trucks, according to the IPCC. Changes are required not just in technology, but also in people's behavior.

Another way to look at the E.ON announcement to spin off their nuclear, coal and gas based energy production is that they are getting rid of their high risk assets to avoid having the profitable side of the business liable for the costs of disassembling nuclear power plants, storage of spent nuclear fuel (far from a settled matter in germany, the final costs of which are basically impossible to predict) and, of course, the consequences of co2 emissions.

If/once the new company goes under, the german taxpayer will be left to foot the bill for decades of E.ONs irresponsible practices.

I haven't seen this point made anywhere in the english-speaking media, but in case anyone over there reads german, here you go:

spoekenkieker, it may be that E.on has hit upon a novel trick to get out of paying for its nuclear decommissioning costs. I have seen some commentary from EU journalists & analysts on Twitter whether the new announcement is really just a clever strategy. But those people seemed to indicate that E.on's responsibilities can't be so easily abandoned, and that there will be considerable scrutiny on their next moves for that reason.

The costs of nuclear plant decommissioning and whether laws are strong enough to ensure the owners of such plants have set aside sufficient funds as required is an ongoing, contentious issue everywhere, not least in the EU.